


The Waiting Game

by JustASadCryptid



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: ALL OF THIS IS THEIR ROLEPLAY PERSONAS, ALSO IM NOT A DREAM APOLOGIST I JUST THINK HES NEAT, Angst, Dissociation, Dream's clock, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I dont know what to tag its just, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Injuries, NONE OF THIS INVOLVES REAL PEOPLE AND IF ANY OF THE CCs SAY THEY'RE UNCOMFY ILL TAKE IT DOWN, Prison Arc, Repressed Memories, Scars, Self Harm, Serious Injuries, headcannons, hes been through some shit, its just dream remembering stuff and then getting a bit edgy, kind of, only really at the end, orphan!dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29809809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustASadCryptid/pseuds/JustASadCryptid
Summary: Dream thinks being imprisoned is a lot like a waiting room.He paused. Then revised that statement after a moment.Prison was exactly like a waiting room, really.
Relationships: Cara | CaptainPuffy & Clay | Dream, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	The Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. I've returned.
> 
> This is my first Dream SMP fic in the fandom! I'm just gonna preface again that this is only their roleplay personas. All of the depictions in this are based off of roleplay and not the real CCs. As well please don't send this to any CCs, (just in case, I doubt that will happen). I'll also say that there isn't any shipping in this, I'm not comfortable with shipping so there's your warning.
> 
> TW: This is the prison arc so, imprisonment, regressed memories, slightly graphic descriptions of injuries, implied child abuse, disassociating, and self harm in the form of purposefully banging ones head against the wall.

Dream thinks being imprisoned is a lot like a waiting room.

He paused. Then revised that statement after a moment; prison was exactly like a waiting room, really.

When you sit in a waiting room, with nothing to do but, well, wait, you become very aware of the space around you in ways you usually wouldn’t. You notice things, you watch things, you study things.

You learn how things feel, how they look, how they sound. When usually, they would be nothing more than an unnoticed, passing thought.

On days like this, Dream tries his best to remember what’s in front of him.

The only thing the man could hear while sitting in his prison cell, was the bubbling, sizzling, intimidation of the lava wall just beyond his little one block border. Sometimes, on rare, random occasions, he'd hear the song of guardians festering somewhere within the prison. Other than that, white noise, it was silent.

The obsidian walls were dark, lightless. They weren’t good at reflecting, and since the only sense of luminescence came from the lava wall (that he could just hardly reach), if you crawled to the darkest corner of the room and turned around, it'd be hard to see just about anything at all. 

He studied these walls, their individual cracks and crevices. He traced their bumps and memorized their patterns. It made no sense how his mind decided to watch these lines, when he had nothing else to do but think, but he let it happen anyway. Now when he sits and watches, his eyes follow these lines out of instinct. Sometimes, if he stares for long enough, the meddled colours of deep purple and black begin to look like images on the wall.

But aside from the appearance of the cell, that still left the few basic sets of furniture in the room to be observed.

His chest, to which he also memorized the wooden streaks of, was crafted haphazardly with little care. It had a crest that was put together wrong, just slightly off centered when it was placed on the lock, but being as weak as he was now he couldn't adjust the black stone to become centered.

So it sat, just slightly crooked, mashing with the faded oak colouring of the rest of the wood.

Inside the chest was filled with books that Sam had allowed him to have. He'd rearranged them many times now, when boredom struck. Sideways, stacked on top of each other, spine up, paper up. He put them in lots of different positions.

Rarely did he write in them anymore. 

He noted at some point that Tommy told him to write some ridiculous stories for his own amusement, but Dream hadn't anything to say anymore on those blank pages that he hadn’t already said out loud. He wasn’t a coward like that. 

His cauldron was next to the chest. It’s being there was easy enough to understand; it was his bare essential facilities.

It was just a sink. He wasn’t used to washing his bare hands so often, but since all he had was the chilled water, he found himself wandering to it. He liked watching the water rippled. But he hated his bare hands, and it disgusted him every time he went to wash himself. He could drink out of the water too, though it was fairly dirty, and he often couldn’t bring himself to drink it.

But at least the sink wasn't as hastily made as his chest.

His lectern was next. Again, it’s presence was easy enough to understand, it was simply there to hold books. Books he used to write. 

Books he no longer had.

Sam replaced them the first few times when Dream threw them into the lava, but then he stopped. The warden must have become tired of leaving to retrieve new ink sacks and paper, so he just shut Dream down the next time Dream tossed one into the fire.

Now Dream kept as many books as he could in the chest after tempting fate one too many times.

Dream thinks that's what his real problem is, he sees the line, respects it even. But there's always something that pushes him over it. And when that happens, he fucks up.

No use dwelling now. He continued on.

For whatever reason, Sam didn't think it necessary for Dream to have a bed. To which Dream thought was possibly the dumbest thought process for someone of Sam’s intelligence to have. They gave him a chest full of books, paper and quills, a lectern and a fucking clock, but they couldn't be bothered to give him something to sleep on? 

Of course he understood, logically, why he didn't get a bed. Sam had made him set his respawn within the prison, just above that horrible little block of water that he got dunked into when he...

Hm.

His point is that his back hurts like a son of a bitch. All of him hurts these days though. Obsidian is horrendous to sleep on, smooth and lumpy, like sleeping on a pile of rocks. At least he gave Tommy the privilege of having a fucking cot to sleep on. Dream knew he at least deserved a pillow, or a change of clothes more than once a week.

He doesn’t even think a bed would look half bad right underneath his clock. 

He pauses again, then he curses himself. Pressing a fist to his proclean mask with bared teeth. He forgot about the clock.

The lava was loud enough for white noise, sure. And the guardians gave him that little happy shock of adrenaline when they scared him after making a particular loud noise. Sometimes there were thunderstorms, Dream listened to those too. Sometimes Sam would tune into the communicator placed where Dream couldn't reach beside the respawn point, Dream listened to those every single time.

But the clock, this was the constant. So constant it slipped his mind that it's incessant ticking wasn't just in his head. It hurt like tinnitus after an explosion.

That's where he sat most days, and now as he recounted the room, cross legged with rigid, straight backed posture. Staring at the clock.

It wasn't his first, not by a long shot. He'd thrown so many fucking clocks into the lava, onto the cold obsidian floor, the ticking in the beginning drove him crazy. But Sam wasn't in the mood to understand what the warden must have assumed were hysterical actions, so he just kept replacing the clock. 

Dream came up with games to play involving the clock after accepting it into the cell. They were so elaborate and he played them mostly in his head. It was something to keep him occupied when he was having one of those days.

A bit in the middle, Dream became so bored, he skipped his games and just threw the clock into the lava wall so Sam would come in and speak to him.

There was something off about Sam that day, when he gave him his last personally delivered replacement clock. Dream could tell this from the way he carried himself, because even with the netherrite armour, he still looked small. Dream had memorized him years ago just like the obsidian floors and wooden patterns of the chest, and he didn't need to know cuazation if he could continue to be a catalyst.

Dream wasn't exactly proud of what he'd done, it wasn't his best work, and if he was truly being honest, he did it out of desperation. When Sam didn't rise to the personal advancements about his behaviour, about his prison, about leaving Dream in these conditions, Dream restored to something he had to gamble on.

There was that fucking line again.

He told Sam what he and Tommy did in exile. He told Sam what he was capable of, hoping it would make him squirm, hoping it would show Sam how little power he really had over him. 

Sam decided not to give him a new clock that day, and he left the cell with Dream on the floor with a bruised stomach. Of course, he was given a new clock eventually, but it was through the automated food dropper Sam had installed. He'd pushed his fucking luck again, he got too testy. Now Sam wouldn't come in at all.

This is why his clock games were never as fun, or his books never as engaging, or just tracing the patterns of the obsidian floor as thrilling. Because people react, objects stay stagnant. You can memorize them all you want, but somehow, some way, people always manage to surprise you. Dream grit his teeth harder, hands smoothing over the glossy bumps of the ground.

People were so fun, and he craved the thrill so desperately.

Dream wished he’d never brought up that stupid kid. He shocked himself with a laugh just entertaining the thought.

He and Tommy may be similar but they had one crucial difference; Tommy needs people to care for him, to support him, to help him. But Dream needs people to entertain himself, to give him a thrill, to watch them. He’d go crazy in this isolation, but it wasn’t the loneliness that would do him in.

Back to the clock.

Dream had one, out of the dropper again. It was shiny and brand new, clicking and ticking and making a fucking racket that slipped deep into his head, and now it was quieter than the white noise.

But today was one of those days. Dream could feel it when he woke up with his spine jutting out of his back in a curled up coil, when he couldn't hear anything at all.

He wasn't in the mood today for playing games, so he sat, perfectly primed in front of that clock and focused. He demanded that he come back to himself, because for all the deep seated hatred he held, he knew one thing for certain, and it was that he wasn't letting himself slip away like last time.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. He mouthed each sound, though if Sam was watching he wouldn't be able to tell, Dream was wearing his mask, but really, when wasn't he wearing the mask. 

When he was on his own, before he slipped up, he used to take the mask off once and while, to let himself breathe. Now he never knew who could be watching. 

Tik, tik, tik, tik, tik, tik, tik. He desperately tried to hear the clock.

It was a calculated risk, what he did next, just like everything he did. But Dream decided to close his eyes, focus on what he could hear, what he could feel. He rationed, silently of course, that if he did this, he would be able to redirect himself back to his burned senses. He just wanted to be in sound mind, for five, fucking, minutes.

Then the numbness took hold. It was a calculated risk, and he was once again facing the consequences of his actions.

As he felt the last of him in that present moment slip away, he thought to himself. He’d wanted to try it on Tommy once, to see what would happen. Technoblade was the one who told him what it was called. And he’d never understood until his captivity. 

Sensory Deprivation.

When he opened his eyes again, he knew he wasn't really seeing, everything was much too blurry for that. White around the edges, far away, yet all too close. As if he was losing his vision entirely.

But he knew what was happening, knew where he was.

A grassy, untamed plains biome, and an abandoned Nether portal stood in a landscape of endless cloudy sky above him. In the center of it all was a young boy. A young boy wearing a piglin's bloodied tunic, his hair longer than his shoulders, and his hands freshly scarred by molten lava.

Dream didn't exist as a person here, and that ringing knowledge hung in his nonexistent mind, a book he’d once read once had called it becoming a spectator. Which, he supposed, was what he was doing; spectating. He had no physical being here, because that would be paradoxical and illogical.

After all, he was sitting right there, in front of the Nether portal. Crying out, surrounded by the grass, with the horrendous pain in his little hands all consuming.

It was the day he finally left the Nether.

Dream was much older than this boy was in the world he'd brought himself to. And the memory of anything before the Nether was...hazy. He remembered how it hurt. He remembered what he had to do to stay alive, the things he ate, the things he killed. The amount of times he'd nearly respawned.

He'd finally found the last block of obsidian that he'd needed to complete the abandoned portal, deep in the Piglin Mines. After collecting enough gold nuggets for a piglin to willingly take, trading for what must have been years to get anything he knew could help him. Back then he hadn't even remembered what the overworld was, just that they left him there after breaking the portal behind them.

There was no iron in the Nether, which meant no buckets. So he'd lit the portal in a different way. It was severely detrimental to his developing skin.

The child had no time to take it in with his hands in white hot agony, no time to appreciate the pale blue, the green, the hidden sun. But existing as a spectator here was a blessing. 

He couldn't feel the lush grass, grass with blades much too small to cause a problem, but he pushed his bare hand against them anyway. He couldn't smell the fresh pure air, but he still held himself steady to be pushed against it. He couldn’t hear the sound of the light wind, the sound of animals gathering about, but he knew that the little boy without a name could.

The boy cried not just because of the agony he was in but because he'd finally gotten out

Dream tried his hardest to get closer. He wanted to see himself again, for it had been so long. But the grass was sneaking their lucious tendrils around his outlined transparency. The closer he got, the more he became, and the taller the grass stretched behind him, trying to drag him away.

But he carried on.

Blink and you miss it, and he continued to traverse the field, toward the little boy. He wanted to put his once tiny hands in ice water, cut his once long and disgusting hair, hold himself close.

Shield his face.

But blink and you miss it, Dream was gone again, the world melding.

The already endlessly tall grass stretched up past his face to become lucious and beautiful oak trees. The sheep and cows making soft noises became quiet packs of wolves, sprinting against the more solidified forest floor. The portal became a messy hut engraved into the side of a mountain. The endless vast sky suddenly became much darker. More still than the heavenly field he once stood in.

That little boy was a bit bigger now, him and his campfire, and dusty potatoes that he stole from a nearby village. The boy was covered head to toe in hideous scars, he'd managed to wrap his feet up in bandages, and maybe his hands too, though Dream couldn't quite remember.

It was hard looking at the little boy's face when it was uncovered like this. And though Dream thought he'd cut his hair at this point, in this memory it was pulled into a ponytail, exposing his facelessness to the world. Perched behind the blazing flames of the campfire as he was, Dream thought it was fitting for someone who looked like him to be surrounded by hellfire.

Dream didn't want to watch this, he wanted to open his eyes. Because he was there, and he remembered this for a reason. But just as he was gearing up to move away, back to his senselessness and numbing world, away from his dastardly mind, he heard it.

Ticking.

He froze when he heard it in the distance. So did the little boy.

He knew this story much better than he knew most, he knew it because it wasn't just him and his little mind being forced to remember it.

The little boy heard screams in the forest that day. And the two others who know this story would recount that Dream came running to save whoever must have been in such peril. Dream never corrected them, because how were they supposed to know that in the Nether, when someone screams, it means there's fresh meat?

Dream didn't have legs, not really, but he was tethered to the little boy. He couldn't fight it if he tried.

The little boy sprinted over roots, leaping bounds and hurdles over little dips and depressions in his path, soaring through the scenery as fast as he could carry his weightlessness. His bare feet must have been in so much pain, but again, Dream couldn't quite remember. 

He did, in fact, remember that raw, stolen potatoes weren't really doing it for him.

He tracked sound like a hound on a hunt. And once he was far enough into the forest, he finally found the source of all that noise.

Two children, illuminated by nothing but a torch in one of their hands, backed up against the centre of the forest; a giant oak tree. A red eyed pack of wolves was gaining traction, crawling closer to them, but when Dream's feet crunched against the dirty ground of the forest floor, the wolves set their sights on him instead.

One of the little boys, the one holding the torch, swung it forward so its flames pranced in a dancing, scorching, pattern. Lighting up their terrified faces.

Dream remembers how they looked when the embers lit up his exposed face in a mirage of fire.

The little boy didn’t care about the children for any longer though, he'd been through this enough times to know what to do; he wasn’t traced with scars like the wood of that giant oak tree for no reason.

He ripped a wooden axe from his inventory slot, materializing it in a contrasting electric blue light, and swung at the first wolf. The one he’d hit went down with a yowl, another jumped at his back, ripping the fabric of his tunic, and Dream kicked backwards before swinging again. The blood of the wolves neck sprayed at his face, and he continued his siege.

The three animals were quickly taken out, their bodies dissipating into smoke, and Dreams axe dematerialized as he too fell to the ground. He hadn't killed wolves before, he wasn't aware their bodies would leave no meat behind. 

But then they caught a closer look at Dream's horrific mess, bloodied and raw, his exposed face. They shouted in fear and scrambled away, grabbing and yelling in a flurry of movement as they darted the opposite way the little boy had come back into the forest. The little boy did register they were yelling at him, but he could only claw sounds from his mangled throat and spit back.

It was embarrassing, the animalistic ways he acted. But back then Dream hadn't known much english, he could only remember the bare basics of what his parents-

The clock suddenly got louder, resounding ringing pulsated through his nonexistent form. But in reality, where the heat of the lava was crushing his left side, and the cold dampening surroundings of the interior obsidian was freezing him on the other, he almost felt a body again.

He was forced back into the quiet with a slow moving push and pull, the waxing and waning of the moon.

Unreal again, he watched as the forest amalgamated together, melting like it was set alight. And then became reborn into artificial buildings, docks bustling with undefined colours, and the vast sky of a deep green ocean. It was here that Dream watched the largest and most magnificent ship dock on the bay of the town he'd been scavenging in.

He hadn't meant to get caught up in the commotion, the city was far too big and upscale for him to enjoy, it was the smaller towns who feared someone like him. Someone with no face and stolen armour, even on a child's form.

Dream watched himself crawl through the crowds like a dog, but most of the time, his younger self felt the part. He may not have understood exactly what certain things meant in the overworld yet, but he understood crowds, he understood riots. 

He figured that if he could make it onto one of the many boats that he had spotted from miles away, he could take something valuable. Gold in the Nether was valuable, and he knew that fact stayed true here.

The crowd was so large, player tags merging in and out of each other, everyone swarming in a mass of celebration and colour to see the boat. Dream, once again, didn't understand then that it wasn't the boat that people wanted to see, but rather, the Captain.

Tethered as he was, he followed the dirty child to the base of the boat. And as they passed smoothly through the crowd like water, all of the mashing colour and people gave him a migraine induced feeling of pure disorientation, as white memory faded the edges of his vision.

As a boy, he still believed that he could climb his way into the boat without anyone seeing. Something like a lack of spatial awareness, children as young as himself in this memory don’t understand it. 

But just as he made it to the edge of the crowd, all those people scouring together at the beginnings of the dock, someone stepped out from the back of the ship. He could hear it so clearly, the sound of hooved feet clicking and clacking against polished, freshly washed wood.

Click, click, click, click, tick, tick, tick, tick.

And there she was, the Captain of that old server's biggest ship in her full glory, red coat hanging off her then giant stature. She was the prettiest creature he'd ever seen. Her long fluffy white locks cascaded down her back in a ponytail, and her horns were symbols of infinite strength, like a halo.

She was everything compared to what Dream was now.

But her face was so blurred. Her coat was refined, but he was missing the details of it’s rim. The rest of her clothes were undefined, and nearly unnoticeable, and her hair blended into the edges of his vision. 

He smiled when he tried to manifest her image and couldn’t come up with anything, and a pool of deep dread crushed him with it’s weighted sorrow, deep in his nonexistence stomach. He hated paradoxes.

The little boy Dream supposedly used to embody hung down at the base of the ship starring in awe, previous plans of destruction forgotten. 

The boy startled when she yelled to the crowd. Though hadn't remembered what she said, he knew the crowd cheered. His younger body did as well, just so excited and childish, so independent from the hunt. He thought the Captain was a perfect symbol of strength. All these players admired her, so she must have been so good.

He remembered how she swung off the rails of her ship, how she dipped low and spoke one and one with the crowd. The Captain gifted a young woman with a flower he’d never seen that she manifested from her inventory, and threw golden and iron nuggets to the crowd.

He wanted to meet her, but he knew what his face caused people to do.

It became night. Though Dream didn’t startle, he couldn't remember what else had transpired between those two ever changing moments. So, day was deserted in favour of night, and his younger self finally found his way up onto the boat with a solution.

After scaling the side of the ship's perfectly crafted walls using only a mended fishing rod, he made it to the deck. He didn’t do so without being slightly out of breath. for on his face was a paper bag. Dream thinks he found it in the trash somewhere, between large extravagant buildings in the town. Again, he has no recollection of causation.

The boy in the memory watched as the crew lit up their boat with beautiful lanterns, and played songs Dream had never heard the likes of until that day. Even with how faded everything appeared, how he couldn’t remember a single face of any person on that ship, their dance steps could still be recalled as they swung to sea shanties.

The Captain was celebrating below deck with some crew mates. The boy hid himself behind barrels of things he didn't know the contents of. He’d watched her as she skipped to the beat of whatever had been playing at the time, holding a bottle of alcohol in one hand and her Captain’s hat in the other. 

His vision was so limited with the bag on his head, it was just something he hadn't learned to live with yet. So he paid extra attention to where he was hiding, making sure not to watch the people on the ship for too long.

But the crewmates seemed to leave their leader alone after a moment, maybe longer, of waiting in the doorway to her quarters. With stars shining bright in the sky, and lanterns filling the world above with beautiful golden light, the little boy bolted for the cabin door, thoughts of stealing far behind him, for this woman had seemingly earned his infinite respect.

He wasn't thinking, obviously, and for the life of him Dream couldn't recall where the drive came from. The drive for this woman to respect him as much as he respected her. Dream did know that he wanted to know this woman.

As Dream was pulled toward the door to the captain’s quarters, barely open ajar, with those blinding golden lights swarming his visuals, he thinks he might have understood what he really wanted from the Captain. 

He wanted to know if he could be like her.

It was only a flash of events that he could recall next, having abandoned his watchful eye, his protection in favour of pursuing his goal. Dream wanted to hit the child as he slipped into the Captain’s quarters. He wanted to beat the child down, yell at him, make him see how reckless he was being.

He wasn’t watching his surroundings.

Again, time skipped over itself. Suddenly, little Dream's world was being flipped, warped upside down, and he was being dragged by the collar of his musty tunic in a flurry of blinding, clashing movement. 

He remembers this part, how afraid he was of being caught. It was no crewmate that had found his frail bones though. The Captain had spotted him in the corner of her musty, deep red room, and grabbed him as he tried to scramble away. 

She hefted him up with a grunt, her hands yanking at the rim of his tunic, holding him a fair bit away from her face. He instinctively coiled himself up, pulling his limbs close to his heart in defence, but barring his teeth out of instinct, even when she could never see it.

She said something to him, but Dream again couldn't remember what it was. He just remembered that after he may or may not have said something, she placed him on her desk, and held onto the cuff of his shirt in a gruff, fierce hold.

She bent forward, her perky nose scrunched in what Dream then thought was anger, but now understood as amusement. How did this pesky child get on my boat, is what she would have thought.

He hasn't heard her in a long time, but he can still envision the colours of her voice. He wished then, as the memory slowed, that the spectating would end now. He’d had enough of this, he shouldn’t have to see it first hand, because even without a physical form, his chest hurt.

Dream watched in that ever pressing silence, as the little boy said something to her, he was oddly still as a child. She said something back to him, her hands doing something vague he couldn’t place. She pointed to the paper bag on his face. He said something again.

Behind their masks, in synchronized unison they spoke.

"You wouldn't be so kind to me if you saw my face."

The Captain quirked her brow, stood upright in deliberate hesitation, and nodded confidently. He said her words as she spoke, speaking for her.

"I've seen a lot of things, kid. A little face like yours wouldn't scare me off." He didn't copy her little smile.

The little boy shifted on the desk, Dream realized how bare it looked, and knew it was his own fault. The Captain's quarters were so faded and barren, but even as he tried to distance himself from it, he could feel red accents, and morphing shapes of books on railed shelves. He would have scowled.

Dream wasn't distracted for long though, his younger self moved and the movement took his attention. On bruised knees he shifted so his legs dangled off the edge of her mounted desk. The Captain waited, hand on her hip, or maybe more aloof with her hands at her sides. He would have smiled when he figured he couldn’t decide.

But she then appeared gentle with her hands on her knees, and he nearly growled.

He pushed himself closer to the two of them, gliding around them, he was fluid as the ocean underneath the Captain’s boat. They were moving in slow motion, he was stalling.

Dream never liked this part, the climax of the story. But his younger self spoke again, Dream couldn't stop it.

Of course, Dream knew what he had said, but he hadn't dared to voice it in this silent world. The Captain nodded to the boy, and she mouthed along to this invisible conversation.

"I promise." 

It was like music to his ears once.

Once.

So, the pitiful and trusting child took off the bag. The Captain didn't move, didn't so much as flinch. But Dream could see it in her eyes, the disdain for how hideous he must have appeared. 

Dream brought himself closer, so close until if he so chose, he could grab her by the hair or neck. Anything to get her eyes to close.

She smiled, not looking at the fake and all too real manifestation that Dream was in that moment, and bent down to look at himself in the memory. Everything was getting so hazy, colours merging together into a holy white, and the memory was dissipating at its edges.

He didn’t want to look at her anymore, but he was fighting himself, he knew this. 

What did she say to him? What did she say?

He watched her mouth, watched her speak to him with a smile.

"You're hideous." Is what Dream said, but he couldn't even bring himself to pretend that's something that would come out of her mouth.

The white was too much, and the ticking had long since faded into oblivion.

It was a house, that's the next thing Dream registered.

A barely functional one placed in the middle of a snowy mountain biome, high up in altitudes that made his eyes burn. It was made of dark oak, with no glass for windows because the only place he could find sand was miles below the mountain he resided.

Dream built it because the surrounding communities of villagers and players alike were getting hostile. And Dream, above all else, knew what it was to be feared. He wanted to be able to watch them.

He was only a teenager then, but when people saw them they weren't particularly inclined to welcome him into their towns, especially when he was unmasked. Back then it wasn't a mask though, it was a hollowed out pumpkin head, and he used it to his advantage.

His teenage body stood at the face of the cliff he resided on, and despite how empty the surrounding world seemed in this memory, he would never forget the drop on the way to the ground. The stunning river that stood like a great moat above his towering castle of snow.

He could even remember the taste of snow on his tongue after the first snowfall he'd ever been through. It was that day, before he put the pumpkin head on. He knew the damn thing must have been heavy, crushing with the weight of his shoulders. But he'd never seen himself look so confident before this point.

Again, time never existed here, he couldn't remember exactly what point in the day it was, or how long he spent happily standing on the edge.

It was the smell of smoke, the sound of footsteps crunching along the snow. Just like The Captain's great footsteps years prior. The only exception was the ash that was quickly approaching with each fiery gust of biting wind.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. A stumble, a shout, crunch-crunch, tick, crunch, tick, tick, crunch, tick, tick, tick.

They shouted out to him.

"Hey!" Dream remembered them saying, it startled him so, he must have been so deep in thought. It was almost embarrassing how long it took him to react.

Dream had frozen, slowly straightened himself up, and flicked his head backward toward them, the weight of the pumpkin making his movements exaggerated and heavy.

There standing just on the side of his house, were two people. Dream knew he'd seen them before, one from a little village filled with farmers, the kind that believed in fortune and clear skies. The other from a big colony, their flag's flame symbol present on his tunic. He was the one holding the torch.

He was always holding the torch.

"What?" The teenager on the edge called back to them, this time he hadn't needed to mouth the words, he knew how this scene played out. It was one of his favourites.

The boy with fire in his eyes, wearing nothing but a tank top with a reflective blaze patch sewn on the front, some climbing pants and a bandana, he stepped closer, urging his friend to lag behind. And of course his friend was much softer then, wearing a baby blue tunic, wide and baggy assassins gear, and his goggles.

The fiery boy stopped short, tilted his chin upward where peach fuzz was just hardly growing, and reached into his pocket unearthing a wanted poster. It was of Dream with the pumpkin head on, even without the distinguishing features of a face, it was clearly depicting himself.

Dream remembers feeling so proud.

"Our towns would pay a fair amount of diamonds to see you dead, they hired us to catch you" said the fiery boy, he looked nothing like his friend, not an ounce of him was shivering from the cold.

Dream thought for a moment. He'd never really had civil conversation with anyone but the Captain. Back then he still remembered everything about her, had her behaviour down to an art form. These two people were fun, conversation was fun. He remembered thinking about that, how he wanted to continue. 

He knew he could just bolt, use an ender pearl and hide in one of his elaborate mines throughout the mountain. Or he could attack just as easily, get them higher and higher on the mountain until he could push them off, and watch them plummet.

But he hadn't been so entertained in so long.

"Okay..." Dream said, and a sword materialized in his hand. Nothing strong, just enchanted iron.

"Let me pose a query then, if I may." Dream had continued, staggering forward.

"Oh?" said the fiery boy, materializing his own flint and steel, his little friend with the goggles materialized an assassins sword in his stead.

"You give me a head start, and if you can catch me, you win." Dream said, perking up significantly.

"With that thing on your head? Pff, sure, but you're going to lose either way, there's nowhere to run buddy." continued the fiery boy, his eyes were set alight.

"Count to ten then, if you want to play that is." Dream prompted, the wind was so cold.

But Dream's whole body was vibrating with unused energy, heating him to the very core.

The fiery boy was about to retort again, but then-

-Dream lied. This was his favourite part.

“You're on." said the boy with the goggles, taking out his second assassin's sword, having them in dual position. The sound of his voice was exhilarating. His fiery friend looked so surprised, Dream didn't.

"Count to ten." Dream said once more.

So, as the wind continued to pick up, sending ash and snow alike to gather all around them, the boy with the goggles began to count.

And Dream backed up slowly, in time with the boy’s words, to the edge of the cliff, feeling his boots clip stone under the light snow with soft crunches. 

Clip, clip, clip, tick, tick, tick.

The fiery boy looked so desperately confused as Dream made it to the very tip of the swirling mountain, perched just above the deathly ravine below. But the boy with the goggles never stopped counting.

He always understood Dream more than anyone else ever had.

The boy got to number nine, and Dream inhaled slowly, unlike the Captain, or even the fiery boy, this boy’s voice was so clear and cold he could taste it.

He hit ten. Dream’s eyes opened so very wide as he pushed himself by the heels of his boots and lept backwards at the edge of the cliff. 

The feeling of his loose hair dart in front of him in an endless void of exhilarating falling, it was pure adrenaline. When he was running from them, nothing else 

It all went so fast, and for a split second Dream realized he was so tethered to his old, free body, that he'd basically merged with him all together. And that the ticking had become the flickering light of his old friend's torch.

He blinked his eyes again and he was once again watching himself from a distance, though always tethered. He was running again.

Another stunning woodland forest, he sprinted in an endless cycle of feet hardly touching the ground. He felt like he could fly, like he could launch himself forward and the feeling would never end.

He smiled so wide and proud behind his pumpkin head as he traversed through the woods. Leaping bounding, the feeling of youthful light. Dream soaked it all in.

He almost forgot what this memory was before he saw the tree branch.

Dream ran and smashed his face right into it, cracking his armour like headwear, and fell backwards in a swift thump, landing on multiple roots and dirtying his already grime ridden clothes.

He could physically feel his real body cringe with embarrassment. He'd tried for many years to rid himself of this memory. God, it was so endlessly humiliating.

He laid there groaning on the nearly frozen forest floor as morning began to approach. When he fell, his head smashed into the hollowed out pumpkin, leaving him whining with rhythmic pounding of his head in a short amount of agony.

It hit him just like that stupid tree branch did; he had been running for a reason, that the hunters were right behind him. The fiery one was too heavy on his feet, but was a powerhouse of a person, meaning he’d been lagging behind.

But the one with the goggles? His feet hardly touched the ground. When he ran, it was truly as if he was flying. Not even Dream could compete with his speed.

His head never stopped pounding, searing through him pulsating, bruising. He’d had worse, and he’d continued to have worse. But he was dizzy, disoriented.

He attempted to at least get himself up, even if he was swaying, and his vision was tilted on its axis. He thought he would be fine, because Dream always won this game.

Just as he found his bearings, hobbling away from the tree he’d fallen to, he stopped. There was a crack between the two eye holes of the pumpkin. Dream shakily continued to move forward, and pushed his covered hands up, to touch the guard.

The crack in the pumpkin gave a creaking groan, and split upward, upward until it reached the crown of Dream’s head. 

Dream had frozen, and the pumpkin severed itself with a gruesome twisting sound. Watching it unfold as a spectator was silent, but that pumpkin was starting to sound like a clock.

He crashed to the forest floor with a lame thumping noise, exposing him to the world facing forward.

His teenage body scrambled, searching for the next few trees to hide himself. But when he fell to the ground again over the pumpkin's remains, landing awkwardly and harshly on his ankle, and a voice of pain sounded from his throat, he knew it was too late.

He’d sounded the alarm.

He knew he wouldn't have time to check his inventory, and with wide eyes and trembling fists, he realized he could hear the hunters gaining on him. With the dawn of a new day starting, Dream abandoned his only protection and scrambled away.

He couldn't run nearly as fast with his injured ankle, not broken but not sturdy. And for a split second Dream thinks he may have overestimated his abilities. He fumbled forward through the trees as quiet bursts of wind sent leaves flying by his face. And he fled onward until he could fight his way into a pit of depression in the dirt where he would be hidden.

He got out his bow and arrow with fading blue light, and stayed very still.

Their pattering feet were approaching, and he hadn't managed to get particularly far from the damn remains of his pumpkin head, he was too exposed, too exposed, too exposed. And though still tethered he longed to hide himself away, to run farther. Why did he stop so close?

Well. Dream knew why once. He must have just forgotten.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick went their feet as they skidded to halt by the pumpkins remains. It must have been dissipating into nothing by then, leaving nothing behind as the item despawn. They must have known he was injured. That, or they assumed something else must have got him.

It may have just been the fiery boy and his friend with the goggles. But Dream knew damn well that goggles knew him better than anyone else.

He forced himself to keep wide eyes, to check behind the tree and burrow of shrubs he had hidden himself behind. He held his charged arrow, aligned with the messily crafted bow, at attention, using the last of his stamina on keeping it steady. 

He only had one arrow left, he had to make it count.

He watched ceaselessly. Through the undergrowth he couldn't manage to see the fiery boy, but as a spectator, watching this scene unfold, he wanted to scream. Dream wanted to tell himself to watch the fiery boy too, to stop trying to gain on the boy with the goggles. He wanted to believe his awareness could be split between these two people.

But Goggles was right there.

With his feathered-touched boots, short hair pushing away from his face in the wind, he was so gentle in not making a single sound that wasn't hushed breathing.

Dream nearly screamed when Goggles snapped his head toward Dream, and the light of the rising sun reflected upon the lenses on his face perfectly. Dream didn’t even think he’d made a sound.

He was sure he didn't, he kept still and silent and all too aware.

So aware that he didn't hear the ticking of the other boy's footsteps, stalking him dangerously through the trees, the forestry, doing his best to stay quiet. And disjointed as Dream was he could only watch as the faceless fiery boy approached from behind. 

He stalked slowly, then his hand darted out and grabbed the back of Dream’s old tunic.

There was white, and Dream, for the first time since the Captain, was caught.

“Tick-Tick!” went his arm as it bent at an odd angle, his back slamming harshly into the back of the forest floor. He was winded and in a flurry of movement kicked forward to catch the fiery boy coming to hunt him down.

Again, caught in the light of the beautiful blinding sun, Dream's eyes burned as the shadow of the fiery boy's body darkened him, until he resembled a God. Dream couldn't get a hit on him, and his bow was subsequently knocked away. He was cornered.

But he didn't give up that easily, even though he could remember how badly he'd been hurting. With two limbs incapacitated and his face exposed, he still refused to give in. There was always something else he could do, something, always something.

The boy's axe swung next to his face, and the sun passed, finally allowing the two teenagers to show themselves to each other, in blatant agony. Dream was so very still, not daring to so much as breathe, with the sharpness of the blade impeding on his already ravaged neck.

But the fiery boy never gave the next swing. Dream never closed his eyes in anticipation though, if he anticipated death he would spite it until the end. just like he'd been doing since he got out of that God forsaken portal.

Dream had a bad eye. He wasn't sure what exactly got to it first, he simply knew it didn't work like it was supposed to. His point being that when the fiery boy met Dream's eyes, Dream only really met one of his.

He remembered the look he gave Dream because Dream remembered every time someone saw his face.

For some reason, again, he doesn't recall what happened in between point A and point B. Just that it did and during that time, Dream was hiding again in a cave he dug himself, right where the two hunters had left him.

He knew he'd be fine, he was always fine.

He gave himself a splint. He held down a cow and put it to death before eating it's raw remains. He wrapped his hands and laid out a blanket for himself. But he didn't make a fire, he remembered so specifically that he didn't want the hunters coming back.

It was so long ago but Dream thinks the reason the hunters left was because he got an advance on them. When they were so disturbed by his facelessness, he must have hurt them, or bolted in their shock. Whatever the reason, he is now alone.

Hollow and nothing, that's what Dream was as he watched his teenage body slave over fixing his wounds. He didn't have another pumpkin. so he just looked away from the entrance of the crevice he'd made in the stone, ashamed.

It was if the scene and fast forward itself, Dream noted, because when he blinked next that fucking torch was back as night graced the woods once more. The hunters had returned.

Dream remembers this conversation, but he wishes he didn't.

"Come to finish me off?" Dream said in unison with his other body. 

His teenage body was gearing up for another fight, quietly reorganizing his inventory as his heart rate increased. His fight response lit up behind broken eyes.

But the hunters didn't retort this time, they just stood quietly in the face of the fire. Dream stopped, tilted his head back, they'd already seen him, it didn't matter anymore. But despite this behaviour, lackluster and sorry, Dream knew what his teenage body wanted.

He wanted to run.

"What? What do you want?" Dream mouthed in synchronicity, watching from a mediocre distance. His teenage body pulled out his axe, leaning heavily on his side as his good hand hung lamely off the axe.

It was the boy in the goggles who spoke first, his comrade apparently too struck in shock to respond.

"We brought you something," he said, and his teenage self nearly shivered at the touch of the boy's accent. 

Fast forward again, past the confrontation, Dream just couldn't remember that conversation beyond what had mattered least to him.

They'd brought him a light wood and porcelain mask.

“We got it from the lantern festival in my town.” said the fiery boy, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. The glow of his eyes was much less prominent now.

"Why?" Dream mouthed, holding the mask in his aching hands.

Why did you do this for me? Why did you decide to find me again?

Why did you agree to play this stupid game?

The two hunters looked at each other shyly, before the boy in the goggles went to respond-

But all that came out of his mouth was the sound of a ticking clock.

Things were starting to speed up.

He kept getting closer, every new memory he shifted through, he found himself just that much closer to himself. His own non existent actions become more stabilized. 

It was a wave of desperation that crashed into him when the memories began to merge within each other, like a river of his mind turning to a waterfall.

All of them of the two hunters he met that day on the mountain top.

Eventually he stilled. They were all a bit older now.

Dream knew when this was, it was years ago surely, but he still remembered how it played out. When the hunters finally decided to stop their chase.

It was back in that same field, overgrown with luscious grass that was made of blades far too fine to hurt. The abandoned Nether portal stood dead centre in all its greatness. And the hunters thought they had caught up to him when he slowed in his epic succession, to gaze at the very machine that had been his saviour.

Dream, or his memory self dropped to the ground, and the grass pushed away at their weight. Back again he was, staring at his gloved hands in obvious wonder, the agony a long forgotten melody.

Say their names, just say it, Dream begged himself. but when Dream opened his mouth it was just ticking.

Ticking.

The world of his memory had been clearer than it ever had been as he and himself crashed with something they'd never truly felt. Their adrenaline was still buzzing them to the core, but why had the portal insighted such terror into them? Never had the chase felt like this.

The fiery boy was first, always first. First to talk, first to gamble, first to lose the game. He stopped with a heeding halt when he saw Dream collapse. 

He shouted out to him in stopping clicks of the clock. Rushed over to the boy, no, man now, dropping himself roughly to the ground. He was instantly convinced this was not one of Dream's games, but Dream understood the fiery boy, he understood his naiveness of someone who believed in good things. .

Goggles followed, never too far behind. He dematerialized his weapons of choice. But he had no rush, stauntering over as he did to settle beside Dream, to hold Dream's hand. He was speaking to him, but the memory was too quiet, too fucking quiet. He couldn't hear the wind or the pale grey sky or the sounds he must have been making in such agony.

He couldn't hear what his best friend told him.

There were others this time around, Dream remembers. The fiery boy's father stalked closer with curious eyes, so did their friend the housecat. Dream could feel them staring at his back, holding him hostage with their blinding eyes. All seeing, and all knowing.

Surrounded was what he became, and the fiery boy took his other hand. The boy’s father’s concerned ticking sound with heavy sharp hands on his shoulder, and the housecat’s sympathetic purrs went silent as he tried to knead at Dream's back to help him calm.

He was trapped, trapped again, and instead of silence it was that horrible never ending ticking. How could he ever have wanted that ticking to come back? 

Maybe if he said their names, the ticking would end too.

"George, George! Tell me what to do!" Dream demanded, gasping in half even breaths. And of course, even though Dream never actually made a sound, George replied.

But not with words.

Dream screamed as the world expanded, collapsed, folded apart, when all he could hear was the ticking of a clock.

"Tell me what he said!" Dream screeched, "tell me what he said!"

Because George knew him better than anyone.

"Tell me!" Dream yelled one last time.

It was just them.

The memories were gone. All of it was now in the past, but the present was still not real. Those games had ended, and Dream had fought so hard to win. So in the end, it was just him and George.

The world was an endless void of euphoria. And the two of them stood on a giant clock. The same from the fucking prision cell.

George was there, right in front of him. But there was still such an edge of unreal blurred vision that consumed his best friend. Holding him so desperately away from Dream's reaching and torn apart limbs.

"George!" Dream called out.

Finally he was one, and he realized this when he reached up to grasp at the fabric of his own clothes. Clothes he couldn't identify. All he knew was that the mask was secured on his face. And George was there in all his holy light. It was contradictory, for no light could exist here.

And Dream hated paradoxes.

George opened his mouth, and the world shifted on its axis when the clock's hand moved down an hour. Dream's balance was thrown and again he was on the fucking ground, struggling to maintain his gravity. When George -it was always George- stood untouched by the effects of imbalance.

"Please!" Dream gasped, "What did you tell me that day?" He bowed his head in submission, it was all he could think to give.

He had nothing else.

"I need to know!" Dream gasped again, his good eye burned with ice, and a tear broke it's way through the mess of his face.

The clock was still. Silent. Finally he had peace.

"I told you to take off the mask." said a voice that Dream couldn't recall.

He snapped his head forward, neck straining in agony. The clock struck the next hour. Midnight exactly.

"I told you to take off the mask, Dream." George said before his best friend took a hasty step back.

Dream thought he could smell ash and snow, and his best friend smiled. His feet clipped the edge of the golden rim, and he threw himself back off the clock, hands stuffed into his baggy pants, goggles shielding his eyes from reality.

Tick, tick, tick, tick tick tick tickticktickticktick.

Dream screamed again, grasping at the glass covering of the clock beneath him.

He didn't know if where he was was reality, or if he'd lost himself in another memory. Either way, his new world was blurred at the edges behind the-

Behind the mask.

He snapped his head up once more, knees in agony from his waiting, and he could taste the lava from the wall to his right, feel the sensation of the obsidian beneath him. And there, in front of him, like a holy cross watching him from above.

The clock was mocking him.

Tik.

He didn't think, not anymore, he was tired of trying to figure this out. Tired of trying to solve this puzzle. 

He leapt forward with a cry, sending his bare fist into its glass.

Shards ruined themselves on the solid obsidian floor. Pain coarsed through him, burning his nerves and even though he knew it was real, because he could smell the iron, feel the wet on his cheeks, he couldn't trust it.

Not anymore.

Dream heaved broken breaths through gritted teeth. He’d gotten the dastardly thing to shut up, and with weary eyes, he turned his head to look at it, placed along the floor. Then he froze.

The clock was as broken as anyone could make it. But yet.

But yet.

It still.

Kept.

Ticking.

He couldn't do it anymore.

He collapsed to the ground, violently ripped the clock from it’s frame in a brush of passion, swinging it down in uncoordinated jagged angles of red. And it shattered into a million fractals on the ground.

"Take off the mask." was the last thing the clock said.

So, Dream walked over to the obsidian wall the clock once hung above. He placed his two hands at nine and four, and reeled his head back.

Then smashed his head dead centre into the obsidian. Again, and again, and again, and tik, and tik, and tik.

And Dream finally had the guts to take off the mask.

**Author's Note:**

> I may make more fics based on some of the memories in this one, so make sure to leave some kudos or a comment if you enjoyed.


End file.
